NEIGHBOURHOOD · KELOWNA

Wilden, Kelowna: the neighbourhood I know best

Wilden is the master-planned hillside community above North Glenmore, about fifteen minutes from downtown Kelowna. I’ve listed and sold six homes here and priced more than forty. What follows is what I’d tell you across the kitchen table, with ten years of real sales data underneath it.

Wilden by the numbers

Every figure below is a median of single family detached sales recorded on the Interior REALTORS® MLS®, as of September 2026, covering sales through July. They describe the market. They are not a valuation of any one house.

Two things in that table matter more than the rest.

The premium. In 2016 a Wilden home sold for about 38% more than the Central Okanagan median. In 2025 it was 48% more. The gap widened through a decade that included a boom, a correction and a slow market, which tells you the premium is structural, not a mood. People pay for the elevation, the views and the newer construction, and they’ve kept paying for it.

The sample. Wilden sells a few dozen detached homes a year. Forty-four in 2025, twenty-four in the first seven months of 2026. Two or three custom homes above two million can move a year’s median by a hundred thousand dollars on their own. So read the median as a range, not a target, and never price a house off it. I’ve watched sellers anchor on the 2022 number and sit for six months. The market that produced that number is gone, and the one that replaced it is more patient and better informed.

Where it is and what it is

Wilden sits on the Glenmore Highlands, the ridge north of the Glenmore valley between Glenmore Road and Okanagan Lake. Downtown is roughly fifteen minutes. UBC Okanagan and the airport are about the same in the other direction, by way of John Hindle Drive. Knox Mountain Park is the neighbour to the south.

It’s a single developer’s project. Blenk Development Corp, a Kelowna family company, assembled the land through the 1990s and sold the first lot in July 2003. Long Ridge came first and sold out in 2004. Hidden Lake followed and was gone by 2007. Since then the community has grown one neighbourhood at a time: Ledge View, Terrace Hill, Clear Pond, Still Pond, Skylands, Lost Creek, Upper Canyon, Forest Edge, Rocky Point, Echo Ridge. Hidden Hills is selling lots now, Pondside Landing is townhomes, Antler Heights is duplexes. By the developer’s own count the plan covers roughly 1,400 acres, more than half of it kept as parkland and trail, and just over a thousand homes are built, about a third of what’s planned.

Two things are still coming. Wilden Market Square, on Union Road, is the commercial centre the community has never had. The first phase filed with the City in 2024 calls for two mixed-use buildings with about 14,000 square feet of shops and services, 151 homes including 54 rentals, and a car-free plaza. It was still waiting on council as of mid 2025, with full build-out targeted for 2030. Beside it, the school district and the Province bought land for an elementary school in 2021. No opening date has been set. In May 2026 the City named Wilden its Corporate Community of the Year.

What the homes are like

Detached homes on hillside lots, most of them built since 2003, plus a growing number of townhomes and duplexes in the newer phases. The early streets are craftsman: stone, timber, gables. The recent phases have moved to a cleaner modern look. Every lot carries a registered building scheme, and Wilden signs off on the plans before the City will issue a permit, which is why the streets read as one place rather than a subdivision of arguments.

Views are the currency. Lake, valley, pond or the hills behind, and the difference between a lot that has one and a lot that doesn’t is real money. The lots themselves are hillside lots: retaining walls, sloped driveways, walk-out basements, and in the older phases some serious grades. Budget for that if you’re building or renovating.

A lot of Wilden runs on shared geothermal loops. Blenk and a local contractor set up a utility called TerraSource to serve hundreds of homes on district loops, and the terms differ by phase. On one Long Ridge Drive listing of mine the loop access fee was $409 a quarter. In the newest townhomes the developer paid the drilling cost up front, so there’s no monthly loop fee at all. Ask which one you’re buying into. I wrote up how I think about geothermal as a former HVAC tech, because it comes up on almost every Wilden file.

Buying here: what I’d tell you at the table

Selling here: what actually works

Shoot the setting first. A Wilden home is worth what it’s worth because of where it sits, and a photo from the driveway throws that away. Aerial, twilight and video of the arrival are not extras here. They’re the argument. Twilight photography is the piece I’m asked about most.

Time the media around the weather, not the calendar. I listed 272 Triple Tree Place in December and shot it on the one clear sunset before Christmas. It sold. Winter is a legitimate season on this hill if the pictures show what the buyer is paying for.

Price against what’s listed around you now. Not against your neighbour’s 2022 sale, and not against the builder’s asking price unless you’re prepared to outlast the builder’s patience. Six months at the wrong number does more damage than the reduction would have. 224 Lost Creek Court came to me after six months with another agent and sold in 30 days once the presentation and the positioning changed.

Make the unknowns knowable. Unfinished basement, dated kitchen, a mechanical room that scares people. Get real quotes from real trades and put them in the buyer’s hands. It turns a discount into a number.

Rory and Alwyn sold their 3,700 square foot Wilden home with me and moved to a condo downtown. Their story is on the reviews page, along with the others.

My work in Wilden

Six of the homes on my work page are here. Read the ones that look like your situation.

Questions people ask about Wilden

Is Wilden a good place to live?

If you want elevation, quiet streets, trails out the back door and a newer house, Wilden does that as well as anywhere in Kelowna, and the sales record says buyers agree: a median that doubled in ten years and a premium over the region that widened rather than shrank. If you want to walk to a coffee shop, not yet. Market Square is years away. It’s a driving neighbourhood, and the hill adds a few minutes to everything in winter.

How far is Wilden from downtown Kelowna?

About fifteen minutes by car when the roads are clear, down Glenmore Road or Clifton Road. UBC Okanagan and the airport are roughly the same in the other direction via John Hindle Drive. There is a bus along Glenmore Road, but this is a neighbourhood built around the car.

What schools are Wilden homes in?

It depends on the street. Wilden addresses fall into either Watson Road Elementary or North Glenmore Elementary, then Dr. Knox Middle and Kelowna Secondary. French immersion starts at École Glenmore. The school district and the Province bought a site beside the future Market Square for a Wilden elementary school in 2021, but no opening date has been announced. Check the exact address on the district’s catchment map before you write an offer.

Does Wilden have trails and a bike park?

Yes. More than half the land in the master plan is parkland and trail, connecting Hidden Lake, Still Pond and the ridges above them, with Blair Pond Park on Clifton Road and Knox Mountain Park next door. The purpose-built mountain bike trails, two flow lines, a climb trail and a pump track, are the first phase of a larger network.

Is Wilden still being built?

Yes, and it will be for years. About a third of the master plan is built. Hidden Hills, Echo Ridge, Pondside Landing and Antler Heights are selling now, Cattail Pond is next, Market Square is planned to build out by 2030, and the developer filed a rezoning application for the next phase in late 2025 that raises the protected land to just over half the site.

What is my Wilden home worth?

Not the median. The median is the middle of a few dozen sales a year, half of which had a better view than yours or a worse one. What your home is worth comes down to the view, the lot, the finish, the mechanical, and what’s competing with it this month. I’ve priced more than forty homes in Wilden. Send me the address and I’ll tell you what I’d list it at and why.

Which REALTOR® should I call about Wilden?

Me, if you want someone who has actually sold here. I’m Braden Koop, a REALTOR® with RE/MAX Kelowna (licence 191956), and Wilden is the neighbourhood I know best: six of the homes on my work page are here and I’ve priced more than forty. I track its sales every month in the market report. Call or text 250-801-8725, or send the address through the contact page.

Go deeper

Every area I work is on the neighbourhoods map, with these figures side by side.

Market figures on this page are medians of single family detached sales recorded on the Interior REALTORS® MLS® for the Wilden sub-area and the Central Okanagan, pulled September 2026 and covering January through July 2026 for the current year. They describe the market, not any one home. Community facts are drawn from the developer’s published plans and City of Kelowna records and were current as of September 2026. Braden Koop Personal Real Estate Corporation operates under RE/MAX Kelowna. Each RE/MAX office is independently owned and operated.